While I was returning from a meeting on Autism related legislative efforts in Annapolis, my son murdered my Macbook. He poured liquid on it and his Dad, exhausted from months of medical appointments, work, and trying to provide care for his son when I was called to this meeting on short notice, couldn't reach our son in time to save the Macbook's life. Every bit of research, scanned homeschool portfolio work, advocacy work is gone. The loss is so great that my husband, greathearted man that he is, sank to his knees and stayed there, shaking his head in shock. The Macbook, purchased when we still had two incomes, is an item that cannot be easily replaced. I will be borrowing the antique PC notebook our son used for his computer assisted learning, just to follow emails and inform others that I will only be able to communicate with them to a very limited degree. I am on it now.
My husband's exhaustion has been going on for months. People have no concept of what it takes to keep our son safe and healthy. He has health concerns that are above and beyond being on the profound ray of the autism spectrum. We have cared for him without any respite since his birth, as any loving parent should. We have homeschooled him since the terrible day when his school in their own words 'lost him'. On days like today I worry about the toll that navigating this system of uncertain supports and services is taking on his father.
 |
| Nuri doing brain surgery on my MacBook |
Still, what his father and I are hearing from the medical professionals that lessens the blow on wild days like today is that our homeschooling efforts, love, and one to one attention have resulted in measurable progress for our son, whose prognosis was quite grim. We are joyful when our son makes progress. Our goal for our son is an educational environment where he can thrive. But we must make sure he is safe, properly supported and well cared for in any school he might attend.So far, our experiences have been frightening.
Eventually, when this week's hospital trips are over, when we can rest, I will hold a wake for my poor Macbook. It was a wonderful machine. I will not have another. But I have to move on and do the best I can.
While I was writing this my husband was ordering a replacement mainboard for the macbook. So I was wrong. I did see my macbook again, complete with new brain ;)
ReplyDeletebless you, and i hope you were able to save your hard-drive information. just to let you know, if you set up a paid hotmail account (about $20 a year), you will have access to their large cache sky-drive storage. it will hold 20 gigabytes of data, is secure and accessible from any internet connection. i sleep a lot easier knowing my work is stashed there.
ReplyDeleteThank you Selene that is a great idea. My husband had done something I was unaware of, and that is to set up the macbook so it uses the time machine function and backs up to an external hard drive. In fact he had not thought of what he had done because we were so tired. It dawned on him much later. The advantages of being an IT guy's wife;) My bad habits caused some loss. My in progress work saves to my desktop and I should never do that. But he has suggested a cloud storage solution as well and I need to take it.
ReplyDeleteHi, Kerima,
ReplyDeleteJust discovered your blog through mutual friend Rachel and glad that I did. I keep hearing talk about this cloud thing and clearly I need to find out about it because if my laptop ever keeled over, I'd be sunk.
I can empathize with your situation. My son Jack (7 yrs old) began with life-threatening illness and has required extra help since he was born. We unschool (specific form of homeschooling) and we, too, feel it is the best environment for him.
Have you thought further about getting respite? I'm terrible about it myself. I have to schedule it in advance, recurring, just to make sure I do it.
So very nice to meet you.
Hi Brenda,
ReplyDeleteVery nice to meet you too. I know about unschooling my son was so traumatized when we began homeschooling him that I had to unschool for a year. Everyone is trying to convince me to look at respite. But when they seen my boy they send people the size of NFL Linebackers. I imagine these guys restraining my son and I just say thanks but no thanks. I'm good. It was so bad what happened to him at school. I think we may have lost him if we had not pulled him out. It really depletes your trust in care providers.